Football writer and prolific tweeter Miguel Delaney made the point on BBC 5 Live last night that Ireland were essentially Europe's Stoke City. It's a philosophical point as well as a literal one. There are so many Stoke players in the Ireland team: Jon Walters, Glenn Whelan, Marc Wilson, and Shay Given all fly the flag for the Potters.
And judging by social media last night, many of the Stoke City squad sat down to watch Ireland hammer Bosnia, and they came armed with emojis.
Peter Crouch had a succinct reaction to the Walters scoring two goals, offering a Super Jon tweet, a thumbs up emoji and a light-skin card emoji
Super Jon 👍🏻 @JonWalters19
— Peter Crouch (@petercrouch) November 16, 2015
Steve Sidwell (yes Steve Sidwell still plays football) stirred the pot with a vaguely controversial tweet about knighting Sir Jon that also included a hand-clap and a light-skin card.
Should be a #sirjohnwalters day forever more on the Emerald Isle 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
— Steve Sidwell (@sjsidwell) November 16, 2015
It's also clear that Shay Given's nickname emoji is the horseface. After Given offered the prayer emoji following Walters's penalty, Stan Petrov was first-in with a horseface reference.
“@StanPetrov19: @No1shaygiven r u texting from the bench🐴🐴🐴🐴”> from the sofa 🐴
— Shay Given (@No1shaygiven) November 16, 2015
After Ireland won the game and qualified for the Euros, Jack Butland threw some more horseface hope towards his goalkeeper teammate.
congrats mate, the 🐴 isn't done yet! https://t.co/wf03tKPbrU
— Jack Butland (@JackButland_One) November 16, 2015
Bojan, on the other hand, offered a polite round of applause emoji after Ireland qualified, and the strange but necessary light-skin emoji card.
Congrats lads!! 👏🏻👏🏻 https://t.co/LQq70jn6n5
— Bojan Krkic (@BoKrkic) November 16, 2015
Young Stoke striker Dominic Telford would not be known to many Irish fans, but he was happy to offer a hand-waving emoji after Ireland's first goal.
— Dom Telford (@DomTelford9) November 16, 2015
Charlie Adam decided to shirk emoji duty entirely in his tweet about Walters last night. Maybe he's still sore about Scotland not qualifying.
super Johnny Walters again 1.0 Ireland
— Charlie Adam (@Charlie26Adam) November 16, 2015
In other news, no one on Stoke tweeted about Glenn Whelan last night.
